(From Ethan J. Skolnick for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Online)
President asks Heat star to talk with young men about success
Two Chicago guys with a common interest are scheduled to meet for the first time Friday.
President Barack Obama has invited Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade to Washington. Wade has agreed to participate in a daylong event in honor of Father’s Day and focusing on male mentorship. After flying in from Chicago, where he is hosting a youth basketball camp, Wade will check in at the White House and then travel to area community organizations to speak with young men from the Washington, D.C., area about how they can achieve their aspirations.
Then he will return to the White House for a town hall meeting with the president, community leaders and other prominent young fathers. The day will conclude with a barbecue, during which Wade will again speak to high school students about his experiences. It isn’t clear whether Wade and the president will get to spend any time together on the White House basketball court.
The invite occurred after members of the president’s staff learned that Wade was hoping to meet the president and perhaps even play some one-on-one, a desire that Wade has expressed in various interviews. The White House reached out to Wade through his representatives last week to inform him of an opening.
Last Thursday, at the Overtown Youth Center, Wade discussed the potential encounter in hypothetical terms, since it had yet to become official.
Wade said he would be flattered “just that he took the time out, more so than anything.”
“Total sign of respect,” said Wade, who kept an Obama plaque in his locker after the election. “A guy from the place I call home, Chicago. And just to think of him as a person, and everything he has to go through. I think my life is tough sometimes, what I have to go through, and people say about me, but it’s nothing compared to the guy who is running the country for us.”
And if they got on the court together?
“I would just love to play with him, and have that conversation on the court that you have, and just see how he is,” Wade said.
Would Wade trash-talk?
“There won’t be [any] need,” Wade said, laughing. “I would totally win, hands down. There’s no need for me to trash-talk. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be like him trash-talking to me in a debate. He would totally kill me in a debate, so why would he trash-talk to me? Just murder me with silence.”
Wade has seen clips of Obama’s game, including his scrimmage with North Carolina in April 2008, when the 46-year-old lefty took on Tyler Hansbrough and the Tar Heels.
“I think the people were just letting him do a couple of things,” Wade said.
“But from what he said about Carolina, and how they wouldn’t let him at first, I like that.”
He also liked what Obama’s election signified: “That you can do anything. Us athletes go out there and we say that a lot. Every kid is not going to be athletic. But once you go into these young black neighborhoods, and now they see this president, that he overcame everybody telling him that he couldn’t become whatever in life, and he became the president of the United States of America, [they see] that you can do anything in life. You just have to put your mind to it, your heart to it, and you have to believe in yourself. Once he did that, it should have changed the outlook for everybody.”
Does Wade want to go into politics?
“No,” Wade said. “Not for me. I would love to get more knowledgeable. But go into it? I’ll leave that for Zo.”
As in former teammate Alonzo Mourning, his partner on Zo’s Summer Groove. Mourning has met Obama and actively campaigned for him.
“You have to be long-winded as well,” Wade said, referencing Mourning’s well-known characteristic.
“I’ll leave [politics] up to Zo, but I’ll support him.”
Loading ...
